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Neil Newman

I SEE YOU
I am sitting in a café in Nihombashi on the edge of the financial district close to the Bank of Japan, having just stepped out of the crisp cold air of a Tokyo winter morning for a latte. Outside the café is nothing out of the ordinary being a typical financial district coffee shop with snacks, a light lunch menu and a list of fancy coffees. But, inside could not be more different – the shop’s staff are made of white plastic.
The robot waiters, or avatars, that serve the café’s customers are remotely piloted by disabled workers, living all over the country. It aims to create a more inclusive environment for disabled customers too, with carefully thought out wheelchair access, as well as helping with the local shortage of labour.
Robot cafés and restaurants are not new, there are some gimmicky ones in Hong Kong and many in China, and Japan has one of the loudest and noisiest robot restaurants around in Shinjuku on the well-worn tourist trail, but this café is quiet, and as you would expect, relaxing and as far from a tourist attraction you can get.
DAWN cafe, an acronym for Diverse Avatar Working Network, is a coffee shop owned and operated by Ori Lab, a designer and manufacturer of OriHime avatar robots. The avatars, conceived by CEO Kentaro Yoshifuji, who as a child was immobile and unable to attend school though illness, found the endless staring at the ceiling haunted him as an adult and he wanted to do something about it.
After venturing into electric wheelchairs and winning national prizes for his designs, he focused on a concept communicator robot, OriHime, which today takes the form of a small desktop white plastic device with a head, eyes, something of a nose, an upper torso and two flipper type arms. It is equipped for two-way audio communication, and with a camera in the middle of its forehead, one way video. A larger model recently built, OriHime-D, is about the size of a six-year-old child and very similar in appearance to the now defunct SoftBank’s AI Pepper robot, moving around on wheels.
Although initially designed as a tool to combat loneliness, OriHime is also having an impact on the choices available for disabled people to work remotely and hence the café. Yoshifuji’s secretary, Yuta Banda, who works in the same office using a OriHime is one such employee, having been bed ridden since he was involved in a traffic accident at the age of four, he never physically attended school either.

HIMITSU WO SHIRITAI
The ‘barista’ robot in the café was the real AI deal, a ‘Nextage’ humanoid robot made by Kawada Robotics and used in factories assembling diverse products such as coin handlers, make-up and swiss watches. And now it makes coffee too under the watchful eye of a remote worker. But everyone else was ‘piloted’.
Hollywood typically focuses on dystopian worlds overrun by robots, somehow in conflict with humans and trying to annihilate them, but this is very different as the avatars do not use artificial intelligence but the real stuff, as interacting with one of these machines is a direct connection to the human pilot and perhaps one of the reasons Pepper was something of a failure in the service industry when it appeared in many stores including clothing retailer Uniqlo. Often, it didn’t really know what to do and as shoppers became bored of them, store owners gave up on the gimmick. In the case of DAWN café, its pilots know exactly what to do and they make you laugh.
So where could this go? The theme of piloted avatars was core to the storyline in the 2009 film ‘Surrogates’ starring Bruce Willis and Rosamund Pike. In the story, most if society thrives through youthful robotic interpretations of themselves, while the ‘pilot’ ages ungracefully hidden from each other and never to meet in their homes. Driven from a pilot chair, the fictional devices exchanged sensory information with the avatar; sight, sound, touch, and the avatars were able to walk, run, leap – navigating autonomously.

Perhaps this is a future view of how telepresence develops or sidesteps the need for artificial intelligence in robotics – which we inherently are not keen on in case they run amok. The technology could help where a physical presence is restricted or difficult. Avatars can offer an alternative way of visiting places or attending meetings when you can’t travel or physically be there. At an extreme, exploration of difficult to get to places, such as in space on other planets.
But, for down to earth applications, they would be for remote working, and I suspect this is the route Elon Musk and Tesla are taking with plans for humanoid robots using its self-driving car technology, after all his cars are simply piloted robots. Other robot manufacturers may be well advised to do the same and investigate piloted avatars as product lines.
Are Hong Kong property prices, like its hamsters, in the eye of the Tiger?
MATA AU HI MADE
As for Ory Labs and OriHime, the devices are currently available to rent, and as similar products come to market you may in the future be able to pop into an electronics store to buy one or something similar.
In the meantime, I enjoyed my perfectly made latte and toasted tuna melt and the quiet environment the café with its very calming atmosphere and its very pleasant staff, one of which raised a white plastic arm to wave me goodbye.
Neil Newman is a thematic portfolio strategist focused on pan-Asian equity markets


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How robot avatars piloted by disabled people are changing Japan’s work routine, while helping to solve its labour shortage

Neil Newman has woken up and smelt the coffee. Photo: Neil Newman

At a cafe in Tokyo, robot waiters serving a cup of java are piloted remotely by disabled workers across the country. Photo: Neil Newman

Photo: Neil Newman

Artificial intelligence used in hiring at Japanese companies, to read résumés and check applicants fit the corporate culture

An interviewer meets a student online for a company in Tokyo, Japan. Several companies in Japan are testing AI to help recruit talent and see if they would be a good fit for the role and company. Photo: Kyodo

Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Co. interviewers hold online meetings with students in Tokyo on June 1, 2020, the government-set start day for companies to hold interviews with job-hunting college seniors. Many companies have switched from face-to-face meetings to online interviews amid continuing worries about the new coronavirus. (Kyodo) ==Kyodo

TOKYO - NOVEMBER 11:  (JAPANESE NEWSPAPERS OUT) Students who will graduate their colleges coming spring queue up for the joint job interview for new graduates held at Tokyo Big Sight on November 11, 2010 in Tokyo, Japan. 2,200 students who have not received offers from a company participated in the event, which only 185 companies attend.  (Photo by Sankei via Getty Images)[23JUNE2020 FEATURES]CREDIT: Getty Images

Photo taken on May 18, 2020, shows a computer screen displaying an online job interview for a university student (R) amid the coronavirus pandemic. (Photo by Kyodo News via Getty Images)[23JUNE2020 FEATURES]CREDIT: Getty Images

Why Japan will profit the most from artificial intelligence

The country’s shrinking population and aversion to mass immigration mean it is well placed to embrace robots and AI in the workforce

A Japanese-developed robot designed to keep the elderly company. Photo: EPA

An elderly man looks at the menu of a restaurant in the Ginza shopping district in Tokyo on February 13, 2017. Japan's economy expanded 1.0 percent in 2016 as a bump in exports and capital investment offset weak spending at home, data showed on February 13, although it was unlikely to erase concerns about Tokyo's faltering war on deflation. / AFP PHOTO / Behrouz MEHRI

TO GO WITH STORY Lifestyle-communities-tribes-Japan-salarymen-employment,FEATURE by Alastair Himmer This picture taken on September 30, 2014 shows Japanese businessmen, called salarymen, heading to their office in Tokyo. The salarymen squeeze daily onto famously crammed rush-hour trains to work lengthy shifts at the office -- 12 hours or more is relatively common -- not daring to leave before their managers. In the evenings they might be boozing with clients or summoned to practically compulsory company drinks, where much of the corporate bonding goes on. AFP PHOTO / Yoshikazu TSUNO / AFP PHOTO / YOSHIKAZU TSUNO

TO GO WITH AFP STORY BY ANTOINE BOUTHIER This picture taken on April 5, 2010 shows Tokyo Agriculture and Technology (TAT) University postgraduate student Kazuya Taira demonstrating the new power-assist suit for elderly agriculture workers, developed by TAT professor Shigeki Toyama at the TAT campus in Tokyo. The power assist suits can reduce the user's physical effort by 62 percent on average. When bending knees the muscular activity is reduced by half, and the suit can also take most of the strain out of crouching. AFP PHOTO / Yoshikazu TSUNO / AFP PHOTO / YOSHIKAZU TSUNO

Subway employees help an elderly man in a wheelchair to disembark from the train at a station in Tokyo on May 8, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / Behrouz MEHRI

An employee from Japan's robot venture Telenoid Planning chats with humanoid robot "Telenoid", shaped like a child and composed of minimal human features such as a head, a face and upper body, developed by Osaka University professor Hiroshi Ishiguro at the annual International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo on December 3, 2015. The tele-operated android Telenoid enables it to be remote-controlled by sending voice and movement commands, captured with a camera. The robot, designed for remote education and elderly health care, will go on sale next year. Some 450 companies and organisations are displaying their latest robots with 5,000 people expected to visit during the four-day event. AFP PHOTO / Yoshikazu TSUNO / AFP PHOTO / YOSHIKAZU TSUNO

Robot newscasters Kodomoroid and Otonaroid meet the Japanese press in Tokyo. Photo: AP

This Week in Asia

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At a cafe in Tokyo, robot waiters serving a cup of java are piloted remotely by disabled workers across the country
The initiative aims to help offset the local labour shortage and promote a more diverse workforce



Grande idea: by harnessing the power of real intelligence, not the artificial kind, a café in Tokyo is using robots to serve customers their daily cup of Joe.


Technology

Expresses the views, ideas and conclusions of the author. (Eg. Enough of Crazy Rich Asians, think of crazy poor Hongkongers.)


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Abacus

Abacus | How robot avatars piloted by disabled people are changing Japan’s work routine, while helping to solve its labour shortage

At a cafe in Tokyo, robot waiters serving a cup of java are piloted remotely by disabled workers across the country The initiative aims to help offset the local labour shortage and promote a more diverse workforce

At a cafe in Tokyo, robot waiters serving a cup of java are piloted remotely by disabled workers across the country

The initiative aims to help offset the local labour shortage and promote a more diverse workforce